One of those staple tools that comes in handy time and again, the whole project search and replace. This script works through all text layers in all comps of your AE project. I have been using this to speed up reversioning of text and graphic screens for different languages.
Download from the scripts page.
Clearing the cache has repaired phpBB3 and the site is now fully functioning again. I still intend moving the site to a co-located server soon for increased reliability.
NOTE: Thanks to a kind offer from a forum member, I am currently making arrangements for bdjforum to be moved to a co-located server to ensure future reliability. More news to follow…
Unfortunately the server ran out of space a few days back and caused Ubuntu to crash. Clearing space quickly bought everything back up except bdjforum. I am unsure what the problem is at the moment, having taken the following actions so far:
At the moment phpBB3 is merely giving blank output. I have backed up the database and am trying to repair the forum as my first priority, even if this means a reinstall over the weekend. I know this will be an inconvenience to some daily users, so I will keep you posted.
The next thing I will try is clearing the phpBB3 cache folders which may have cached blank or truncated output due to the previous lack of space. If anyone has any suggestions I am keen to hear them…
This webserver installation was moved to another hardware platform for the second time - now a 2.4Ghz Celeron - to improve response times. The internet upstream was also upgraded from ADSL 512Kbps to Cable 768Kbps. Page loads have shown a marked improvement.
Ubuntu once again proved itself as a hardy operating system, requiring only an edit to the GRUB boot settings, and a re-run of the X-Server configuration, to take account of the new graphics hardware.
With the recent victory of Blu-ray in the HD format war, it is clear that demand for Blu-ray Java (BDJ) development will increase. Home entertainment companies will be looking to wow consumers not only with high quality video, but also new features made possible by fully programmable graphics layers, internet connectivity and persistent storage.
As with all technical developments, there are many questions to be answered, and ‘best practice’ methods yet to be found. I have created a new forum for aspiring BD-J developers so that we can share information and experiences towards creating exciting applications that will help consumers make the best of their new kit.
A common request over on AEnhancers.com is how to read data into Adobe Scripts from Excel spreadsheets. For a long time there has been no satisfactory answer; the standard advice being to export and read-in via a delimited text file (CSV). In an attempt to improve this situation, I have created a tool, part Adobe Script, part Java, to enable communication between user scripts and Excel.
This tool is functional but in its early revisions so I encourage you to try it out and welcome any suggestions or bug reports you may have. Note that the documentation on the project page is also included in the download for ease of reading.
I often face the situation where a numbered sequence of files is being generated or delivered, either from a design team or computer renderfarm. Where they are not arriving in order, identifying which files are missing can be a lengthy task and difficult to automate. So, I developed a small GUI based program to do it. ‘GapFinder’ analyses a folder of numbered files and lists apparent ommissions in an easy to read format.
‘GapFinder’ takes the form of an executable JAR file and is cross-platform. Get it here:
GapFinder.jar (<10kb)
I have just finished creating a website for friend and former colleague Ben Bailey. With over 15 years of experience in Production, Ben Bailey has established a skill set that covers writing, directing and editing (Avid Media Composer) to an advanced professional level. The website employs a clean, functional HTML design and high quality streaming Flash video to achieve the showcase functionality that Ben was looking for.
Today I learned of two undocumented commands in After Effects’ Scripting which have huge implications. It is well known that not all of After Effects’ features are presented by the ExtendScript API, leading to many limitations, such as the inability to create a layer mask via code. This can be largely overcome with nab’s discovery of two commands (taken from this post):
app.findMenuCommandId(”<GUI command name>“) ;
app.executeCommand(<commandId>);
The use of these should be self explanatory, but their existence begs two questions: firstly why they exist, and secondly why are they undocumented? My guess is that they are an ‘in development’ feature used by Adobe programmers to test the integration of scripting before the API was complete.
Since the API is still incomplete these commands remain very useful
There is a suggestion on the source thread that these command may be unreliable under After Effects CS3, which I am unable to test at this time. This could be down to the reporter trying to directly use the same command code ID’s as reported by After Effects 7.0. Since these numeric ID’s are internal references and probably vary between versions, I would suggest always nesting these commands in conjunction, like so:
app.executeCommand(app.findMenuCommand(”<GUI Command Name>“));
After a frankly underwhelming 50 days of uptime, the cupboard PC’s motherboard gave up: CPU fan only twitching in response to the ‘on’ switch. Fortunately, in these days of Core2 chips and 64-bit computing, older parts are easy to come by and sufficient to run most web services. One trip to the loft later and an all new server chassis was put together.
Major props to Ubuntu once more for not throwing a wobbly after its sudden relocation to a new hardware platform. I only had to plug the old hard disc into the newly prepared chassis and the server was fully up again as if nothing had happened.